Item analysis of emotional exhaustion in pharmacy practice faculty

The primary objective of this study was to identify the single question on the Maslach Burnout Inventory - Educator Survey (MBI-ES) that correlated with high emotional exhaustion (EE) among pharmacy practice faculty.

We analyzed data collected from the electronic administration of the MBI-ES to faculty at United States (US) colleges and schools of pharmacy in 2014. For our primary outcome, we used Spearman's rho correlation (r_s) to identify a single question on the MBI-ES that was highly correlated with high EE (one of three subscales of MBI-ES). We calculated likelihood ratio statistics for each level of the item with the largest r_s with total EE, then converted those to adjusted predicted probabilities of high EE. De-identified data were collected via Qualtrics version 60949 (Provo, Utah) and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 22.0 (Armonk, NY).

The single item, "I feel emotionally drained from my work" (r_s = 0.833, p = 0.01), was most correlated with high EE score on the MBI-ES. Faculty who reported "I feel emotionally drained from my work" once per week and few times per week had 62.8% and 93% chance of having high EE, respectively.

The single item that was most highly correlated with EE may be used for further evaluation of faculty who may be at risk for burnout. Interventions for reducing burnout among pharmacy practice faculty are critically needed for sustaining our pool of faculty.